Posts
It has been quite some time since I have posted here but today seems like an appropriate time to rectify that. There is a lot going on in our world. Both foreign and domestic, it can be very scary. Today I'm going to focus on a domestic issue. For a couple of months now a group of people calling themselves the Occupy Wall Street movement have been protesting. I will admit, as an avid news watcher I have been having a hard time figuring out exactly what they are protesting because it does seem that they are protesting everything. For the purposes of clarity though, I'm going to pick a couple of issues that I think have risen to the top for this movement.
Before I get into their issues, I would like to say that I do applaud what they are trying to do. I wholeheartedly support people's rights to speak their mind and to peacefully protest. It is one of the great things about our nation. We don't have to agree on issues and we can peacefully agree to disagree. Now, back to some issues.
Last night as I watched the Los Angeles Police Department remove the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) from the grounds City Hall, variations on phrase "we are the 99 percent" was heard repeatedly. According to factcheck.org, in the 2008 election there was a 61.6% voter turn out. This was for a presidential election. The question that hasn't been asked yet is how many of the "99 percent" voted in the last elections? If we were to look at the 2010 election we'd find that only 40.9% of our voting population voted. Were the "99 percent" all voting then? Were a bulk of them voting? Do they intend to vote in the next election? I do recognize that they define themselves as the 99% economic bracket that doesn't include the richest 1%.
The argument being this "99 percent" is that the rich need to pay their "fair share." Last night on the news I heard countless interviews where people said that the capitalistic system needs to be thrown out. Take a look historically and let me know how well this worked for the USSR or the People's Republic of China. These were systems envisioned to give everyone their "fair share."
People are demanding equal distribution with their demand for their "fair share." Since when has the United States of America ever been about equal distribution? America has a history of working towards equal opportunity. There is a very big difference between the two. Equal opportunity means that I can work my way from being a poor, broke, student living out of his car to owning his own business and building a name for himself. Yes, that is my story. Equal distribution means that this poor broke student turns to someone else for a bailout and spends the rest of his life knowing that life doesn't have consequences because there will always be a safety net.
Safety nets don't lead to innovation. With great risk comes great rewards. Ask Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Abraham Lincoln. These are consider great American men. These men also had great failures at some point without a safety net. The consequences were real. They were hard. They were devastating. However, how these great men faced these failures helped define their legacies and also helped create this great nation.
It is time to back away from the politics of temper tantrums. I don't care what side of the aisle you are on, temper tantrums have to stop. We need serious voters and serious leaders. We also need mature voters and mature leaders. It is ok to disagree. It is also ok to compromise. Compromise is viewed as a dirty word by many in this day in age but I am here to challenge this viewpoint. I remember taking US History in high school and learning about the Great Compromise of 1787. If the founding fathers can compromise, so can we.
Now is the time to make a difference in our great nation. It is ridiculous at how low the voting turnout has been in recent years. If you don't like how things are being run, get out and vote. If you don't like who there is to vote for, find someone you do like. If you can't find someone you would like to vote for, run yourself! You aren't the only one who is disgruntled about the way things are in this great nation of ours. Let's move away from the politics of temper tantrums and into a new era of discussion, respect, maturity, and discipline. This will be a true era of change. This is going to take true leaders to do this who can focus on solutions and not on personal attacks.
Let's start the discussion. Leave a comment below and lets start an honest and respectful dialogue about true solutions to help fix our country.
